METAL DETECTING: THE BEGINNING
I began my grand adventure in metal detecting when I was 16 years old. My first detector was a White's 66 TR. Soon after, it was a White's 5000 D Coinmaster which I bought during my last year of college. It was while I was in college at Utah State University when I discovered a 1901 Barber half-dollar and a 1908 Indian head penny. The penny still had a full Liberty in the headdress and I was quite astonished by the quality and shine the half-dollar had right out of the ground!
I have had many good finds since then and have learned a lot. One valuable lesson was in avoiding wiping or rubbing the dirt off of silver coins as they scratch quite easily. I now hold them under the kitchen spigot and wash away the dirt without rubbing to refrain from scratching the coin's surface.
Some of my favorite coin hunting locations are old log-home sites where only the foundation still exists. I typically research old topographical maps of the area to find these hotspots. Although the homes are long gone, the stone foundation still resides on the site and I hunt the area that would have been the yard to the home where old pocket belongings, coins, and other objects would have obliviously fallen in a time long ago.
When detecting more recently constructed homes (circa 50 plus years or so), I tend to gravitate towards two story homes. I believe that most of the findings like coins and rings that are lost, were lost by kids. Families with a larger number of kids often had two story homes to house them. This may just be a theory of mine but it has held to be true as I almost always find more coins in the yards of two story homes.